Assets Page, City expansion, unit balance

I have improved the assets page query and load time by a significant margin. I had to make some changes to way data is being stored for military units so if you see something funny (like it showing all structures were halted production this morning) let me know.. I still think the page loads slower than it should. The query itself in the database loads in half a second now as opposed to 2-3 it was before. The page itself should really load in a second, I'll be looking for a bottleneck in the future.

I changed the restriction for a new city to form on the same planet from 10 million population per city to 5 million population per city. It seems its easier to spawn a new star system then it is to get a second city happening on the same planet. That's not right! We don't even have a star lord in the game yet because it will take 3 cities on another planet to get 3 planet lords. The restriction seemed a little ruff considering the populations on Earth cities are barely at 10 million. The expansion checks every 100 turns so you might see new cities pop up in Sol by tomorrow. Any planet with over 5 million population outside of earth will probably spawn another city

There has been a lot of talk about ground forces being superior in every way to ships and most of it is legitimate. There used to b a time when ground units were more expensive and ships were a lot cheaper. That gap has widened considerably but the damage hasn't changed much. So currently you can make a very cheap mass of ground units that can down capital fleets. Its not an unbalanced fight Logistically mind you but for straight money the ground forces have an incredible advantage. We always wanted ships, especially capital ships to be more of a support unit in a ground fight, something that didn't do too much damage but barely took any from the ground unless they were certain unit types . the "Barely took any" part wasn't a reality once you scaled up both sides.

So almost all the ground units have had their damage vs CAPITAL SHIPS cut in half. Aircraft weren't affected but everything below them was and the reduction come against freighters and frigates on up. There were also some other tweaks such as Mechanized not doing anymore than infantry does to ships. Also Artillery had its damaged reduced vs fighters and structures. Artillery was strong against EVERYTHING and at a magnitude stronger it countered its low hit points. Artillery is best against soft ground targets by a wide margin and does hit aircraft as better than any other ground unit but it shouldn't be magnitudes better. It does hit bombers better than any other ground unit outside an actual missile defense. But it shouldn't be hitting structures and defenses better than things like battle suits.

We are also considering upping the damage ships do to ground forces but that will wait to see how the damage taken from ground forces plays out. We may up the Monoliths HPs or ground damage to widen the gap from it and the other ships when it comes to ground pounding which is what its primary role is supposed to be. Right now the cruiser is actually the best bang for the money second to the monolith when it comes to capital ships attacking the ground but the margin isn't that wide.

I am really skeptical about this. I would have been more enthusiastic if if damage was cut both ways. I Don't think fleets should be capable of succefuly attacking cities without ground support unless they outpower them by an order of magnitudes. I agree that it makes sense that Battleships shouldn't be threatened by infantry or tanks of equivalent power without Ion Cannons, but I also think it should take days (100's of turn) for a power equivalent fleet to ground down a big army of ground units without ground support of their own. Monoliths not withstanding.

I've said before that I think the space superiority game should be like the first half of the battle. Space superiority should be a modifier on the ground game, but the ground game is the end game. And if the ground game becomes an after thought I will be very disappointed in the direction we have taken.

On the flip side, one way that ground troops have an inappropriate effect on the space battle is the way they can act as damage sinks for fleets. If you have a few Dreadnaughts taking on a few Cruisers, you would expect the dreadnaughts to make short work of the cruisers. But if the cruisers have a couple of level 10 infantry on the planet below, those dreadnaughts are barely going to touch the cruisers before the cruisers grind them down.

What if we had a mechanic where ships don't spread their fire to ground units (except aircraft) while enemy capital ships are present in the same square? The space superiority battle happens separately before capital ships drop into low orbit to support the ground battle. Would that be hard to code?

Suddenly Duranium Warbirds are a big boon part of city defense, because a bunch of them will screen your inferior fleet. And you will want a few frigates, at least, with armor leveled up. Because every turn you can keep your last Frigate alive is one more turn before the invader's Monolith joins the fray bellow. So each turn your fleet can last before retreating or being destroyed is a turn you have to kill off the attacking Commandos before their fire gets combined with a Monolith and your's gets further diluted by the size of the fleet fighting above your city.

It also means attacker might wipe out the defender's fleet while not taking the city. A split victory becomes possible where one side loses their army and the other loses their fleet.

I think if you're trying to defend a city against a mass ground attack with Duranium Warbirds, you are doing it wrong =)

The only thing that changed is ground units attack vs big ships was lowered. Ships already take a long time to pound ground units into dust. You're talking about a cruiser hitting a ground infantry for 100-120 a turn. Thats the equivalent of a single level 3 mechanized or something. Its quite small. It would take a battleship several turns to knock out a single level 3 10x stack of infantry as it is. For the money using Corvettes would be a lot cheaper.

right now after the changes , a 250 mil 20 logistics monolith can kill 2 lvl10 200x of infantry in 10 turns. The infantry can kill the monolith in 62 turns. But that 10 million in infantry vs about 250 mil in Monolith.

If you take 250 mil in infantry thats 5000x stack or 50 level 10 infantry units (500 logistics also) Which could kill a monolith in 2.5 turns doing 10k damage a turn. The monolith would take 250 turns to do 500k damage to all that infantry.

250 mil of artillery would be 625x stack which would do 100k a turn and kill the equivalent infantry in 5 turns, Thats also 62 logistics vs monoliths 20.

The monolith probably needs a damage boost vs ground if thats its role.

I was talking about warbirds screening capital ships as part of a last ditch effort to delay a large fleet from begining its orbital bombardment. It's not something I'm doing now. It was something that I hypothesized would be useful if a mechanic were implemented that required space superiority be achieved before orbital bombardment could start.

Let me rephrase my concerns. I think large capital ships should be nigh invulnerable to regular ground units. I think that capital ships in orbit should be able to pound away with relative impunity if their are no Ion Cannons and once the air cover has been dispatched. But the opportunity cost of that safety should be time. The way ground forces counter a siege is to break the siege with reinforcements. Bringing in your fleet or enlisting an ally. From a balance perspective that means the player with the strong army needs time to reach out to allies and time for allies to respond to have a chance against the stronger fleet.

Maybe that balance is still there, I'm just a little apprehensive about talk that the time it takes for capital ships to kill ground units might get cut in half after they have just been made twice as safe in orbit.

On a seperate note, for immersion reasons I think it makes sense that Corvettes and Cruises do faster damage to ground units. Lighter vessels presumably skim lower into the atmosphere to take the fight directly to the ground forces.

Looking at logistically equivalent groups of max level units (going full defense for spacecraft), ground units still have a significant advantage. Monoliths win against anything other than air units, dreadnoughts lose to battlesuits and artillery, battleships also lose to commandos, and destroyers and cruisers only win against mechanized and armored. What seems strange is that 12 level 10 transports win against 15 max defense cruisers, though it would take dozens of turns and the cruisers would severely damage the transports. Though maybe it makes sense numerically as the fight is 1200 vs. 15. Or perhaps there are errors in my spreadsheet.

Edit: Of course part of the potential of cruisers is that they can carry bombers, but that complicates trying to calculate logistically equivalent groups.edited by Leyic1 on 6/19/2017

I see that logistical advantage ground units as an important balance feature between ground and space units. (And it's important to note that that logistical efficiency does not translate into cost efficiency, which is going to be the limitation you hit first more often than not. A level 100 infantry unit is no more cost efficient than 100 level 1 Infantry units). An attacker is going to choose the battlefield and bring all the forces they can to bear at a moment of their choosing. The defender has to spread their forces between their stratigic holdings. When you choose between building ground or space forces you are choosing between efficiency and mobility. There is a reason that it requires a lot of investment to add hanger capacity to your fleets to shuttle big armies of ground units around.

(On that point, I wonder if the recent tweaks to to hanger capacity might have succefully addressed balance issues between ships but inadvertently buffed ground units by making it so much easier to project their power to foreign planets. My invasion of Mars early in the game required a slow build up of forces on Deimos that required several trips with the only Carrier I could afford to build at that point. It wouldn't have required nearly as much preparation after the hanger capacity buffs we have now. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but something to keep an eye on in the next war. That could undermine the stratigic role of capital ships in bad way. You might consider increasing the size of carriers or something if it seems like it is too easy to land legions of ground forces on enemy planets in the future; which would make them both consume more logistics to balance their increased capacity and make them need more picket ships to protect them from direct attack).

Transports became a problem when the numbers against ships cant go below 1, and infantry is down to 2. it CAN bit I don't want 0 damage units but might have to make exception in tranports case. Transports are too cheap, so are infantry. They used to be 50k and 100k not 20k and 50k. Its like we're splitting hairs with such small numbers.

The only other way I can make ships do a lot of damage to ground without making them simply all around better would be to make ship damage do less and less damage to ground units the more hurt they are. SO you can soften p but not destroy with ships. Thats a complicated new combat mechanic I don't want to get into though. I have a feeling once straegic orbits gets into the game, ships will be a lot more powerful in seiging ground forces and "space superiority" will come into play which has to be fought as space fights.

I didn't mean to get into a discussion about transports specifically. The other poster said "I think large capital ships should be nigh invulnerable to regular ground units.", but my analysis shows that this is far from the case currently. Cruisers are described as capital ships (nothing about them being large), but a max defense cruiser can be brought down by any max level ground unit (except mechanized units). Not only are most space units vulnerable to many ground units, but it's counterintuitive that even the weakest ground units can take on a space unit and win once sufficiently leveled. Like, what weaponry is a transport or infantry unit even using that a cruiser couldn't deal with by staying out of range? It reminds me of Civilization where spearmen can take down helicopters.

Anyhow, the reason I normalized the logistical cost was so that I could analyze cost (specifically upkeep) efficiency for ground and space units (not fixed structures). The results are... interesting. Scouts are most cost effective at taking down scouts. Transports are most cost effective at taking down corvettes. Infantry are most cost effective at taking down freighters. Commandos are most cost effective at taking down frigates, destroyers, and battleships. Bombers are most cost effective at taking down carriers, cruisers, dreadnoughts, and monoliths. But this is idealized, pure combat. Most people will fight with mixed compositions, so relying only on transports or infantry to fight off invading fleets won't do much good when said fleet has other ground units in their hangar space (though I suppose a transport-only defense would help against someone attacking only with scouts, corvettes, and destroyers). And a ground v. space fight with even numbers logistically will take hours, giving time for others to intervene.

I guess I do find it a little off that commandos might be the best unit at taking down particular spacecraft when they're supposed to be specialized counters to fixed structures.

The only other way I can make ships do a lot of damage to ground without making them simply all around better would be to make ship damage do less and less damage to ground units the more hurt they are. SO you can soften p but not destroy with ships. Thats a complicated new combat mechanic I don't want to get into though. I have a feeling once straegic orbits gets into the game, ships will be a lot more powerful in seiging ground forces and "space superiority" will come into play which has to be fought as space fights.

What if: Certain units (not necessarily limited to ships, artillery for example) had a minimum size they could hit? That is, say a dreadnought would always spread its damage over at least 100 size. That's still full damage to a single level 10 (ground) defender, but a mix of lower level units (say 2 or 3 at level 5, no armor, bringing us up to size 60) would be missed simply by the shots going wide (40% of the firepower being wasted, in the prior case). Of course, some may start demanding that units start to shrink while they take damage.

Regarding commandos damaging capital ships: Think of it from the carrier perspective of launching assault shuttles and dropping off teams skilled in sabotage and demolition on what is essentially a massive building with engines on it.

What if: Certain units (not necessarily limited to ships, artillery for example) had a minimum size they could hit? That is, say a dreadnought would always spread its damage over at least 100 size. That's still full damage to a single level 10 (ground) defender, but a mix of lower level units (say 2 or 3 at level 5, no armor, bringing us up to size 60) would be missed simply by the shots going wide (40% of the firepower being wasted, in the prior case). Of course, some may start demanding that units start to shrink while they take damage.

Regarding commandos damaging capital ships: Think of it from the carrier perspective of launching assault shuttles and dropping off teams skilled in sabotage and demolition on what is essentially a massive building with engines on it.

Regarding your first suggestion, that would work really well with a suggestion that had previously been floated that ground units should auto-downgrade when heir hitpoints drop below the max of the next level down. Someone had objected because of the lost time investment of upgrading units. At the time it made sense because we were playing a beta that only went on for a couple of thousand turns and we were itching for war. The time investment doesn't seem like that big a deal anymore. To me at least.

Regarding the damage that ground units do to spacecraft, it does make sense that a large enough force of ground units can take down a ship. Ground units are, I presume, measured at a stratigic level. They represent divisions, not squads. Divisions have headquarters and support brigades. An infantry division is mostly guys with rifles, but it also has a few companies of anti-air guns, a battalion of artillery, a regiment of grave-diggers, a couple of pontoon bridges, a commissary, meteorological team, and a bunch of other random crap under their command. Some of which can score a couple of pot-shots on a cruiser when it orbits over their position. Not something that would normally threaten a capital ship. But remember that a level 10 infantry is not a better equipped or better trained division. It is 100 divisions of the same quality. So 100x as many pot-shots. And I presume even transport divisions represent a lot of bureaucracy and support units as well, not just a fleet of thousands of identical trucks.

I don't know that a level one unit is supposed to represent a division sized unit. Maybe that's a level 5 unit. But my point is that the ground units don't represent tactical scale units, so you expect them to have at least one experimental surface to space missile on hand.

Regarding commandos, I think dread actually mentioned once that something that sets commandos apart from infantry, aside from damage aoutput, is that they can fight in space battles from hangers.

Regarding the point about making ships better against ground units without just bumping up their damage and nerfing ground units, do it by approaching their damage output as a ratio to each other instead of independent values. Then nerf both, but nerf ground unit little bit more. Capital Ships beat ground units that have no Ion Cannons or Bombers, but it takes forever. Both sides suffer attrition at a glacial pace. Because it's not a battle, it's a siege. If your not in a hurry, you lay siege for 300 turns and pound them to dust. If you think they'll be able to muster the cavalry before then, then you bombard for 100 turns to soften them up enough that your invasion army can finish the job. If 100 turns isn't long enough, or the reinforcements get their in 50, then better luck next time. You can't win them all.

If you like this take on ship vs ground, then I suggest buffing the damage commandos do to shields and Ion cannons specifically. A fleet might want to send in a daring raid with their ground forces just long enough to take down the anti-orbit defenses before breaking off the attack and retreating to the safety of orbit. (Then that same inavasion force can repair while the defenders get bombarded over the next 100 turns).

Regarding commandos damaging capital ships: That's a fine explanation for how they do it, but from a balance perspective, should commandos be more cost effective than bombers at taking down capital ships when they are also the most cost effective unit by an order of magnitude at taking down fixed defenses? They're basically a solid anti-ship defense unit and the best anti-structure offense unit, when every other unit in the game seems to be specialized against a certain type of unit, or a jack-of-all-trades.

Edit: Commandos already do plenty of damage against ion cannons and shields. Two commandos would take down a same level cannon or shield in one turn. And if commandos can fight from space, then carriers might not need bombers or escorts to defend them except against dreadnoughts and monoliths.edited by Leyic1 on 6/20/2017edited by Leyic1 on 6/20/2017

I don't see all of your math, but I'm assuming you mean they are more effective if time is not a factor. And time is an important factor. Commandos aren't going to make a meaningful contribution to a battle that takes ten turns if it takes them 100 turns to take down a ship. The capital ships and bombers on either side are going to finish that battle before the commandos have made a meaningful contribution.

In a situation where it is just a capital ship agaist some solitary engineers, it does kind of make sense that they would be sneaking up in shuttles and planting explosives over a long period of time and not taking much damage back because the capital ship isn't designed with that kind of attack in mind. Bombers, on the other hand, will take those capital ships down much faster but take more casualties because the capital ships were designed with bombers attacks in mind.

My math: Starting from the combat table, put everything at max level (I put ships at max defense), multiply by the number of units you need to have 120 logistics (for equivalency), determine relative damage against different units and divide by the total upkeep.

If you're defending, time isn't too important; either the attacker will be ground to dust, or the attacker will retreat, or someone will intervene, possibly on your behalf. If someone intervenes against you, you have diplomatic problems and determining optimal defense composition won't help you, but this isn't a concern against NPCs. If you're attacking, there's no fog of war so you can optimize composition for that specific battle and choose the time it occurs.

But realistically my analysis is idealized because no one is going to fight without mixed composition or with logistical equivalency. The purpose of my analysis was to find the cheapest general defenders, since I'd want many of them to cover all my facilities, and they'll just be standing around sucking up money most of the time. Commandos, backed by artillery to deal with ground units, are looking to be surprisingly versatile in both a defensive and a retaliatory role.

In response to your edit above about commandos and structures. My thinking was more that I thought the ratio of damage to Ion Cannons and Shields should be greater than that to Forts and Rail Guns. A reason for a raid to precede the orbital bombardment that precedes the invasion.

I understand what you did. What I meant was I don't see how long each hypothetical face off takes, but I was assuming that Commandos only inflict more damage on capital ships than Bombers if that battle goes on for a really, really long time. And time is important to the defender in a siege. The more turns it takes for a siege to grind down the defenses, the more turns a defender has to call for help and negotiate with allies to relive them. The more turns he has for reinforcement to arrive and break the siege. Commandoes may well have a hidden value that I wasn't aware of in resisting a siege.

Time should be on the side of the fleet laying siege if they have it. If the defender with just ground forces doesn't have any resources or relationships that can intervene, game set and match. But the fleet should feel a certain urgency to break through if reinforcements are enroute. The excitement comes from the decision, when do you pull the trigger on the ground invasion. Too soon and they can't beat the defenses. Too late and reinforcemnts arrive.

But that's just how I would like it to work. Battles between ships and ground forces don't last long enough for reinforcemnts to arrive from other planets. That's just how I want it to work.

In a one v. one fight between a level 10 commando and a level 10 battleship (max defense), both of which take 10 logistics points, the commando does 2.00% damage to the battleship in the first turn, while the battleship does 1.50% damage to the commando in the first turn. The commando wins in over 50 turns not considering random effects.

In a one v. one fight between a level 10 bomber and a level 10 battleship (max defense), both of which take 10 logistics points, the bomber does 53.33% damage to the battleship in the first turn, while the battleship does 0.83% damage to the bomber in the first turn. The bomber wins in two turns, so there's less opportunity for random effects to change the outcome.

The bomber certainly gets the job done faster, but the upkeep is 30 times that of the commando. If you have the income, by all means use bombers and dreadnoughts to defend every last mine and quarry you have.

The logistical matchup is difficult to make assertions about because there is so much scaling on ground units level. You compare a level 10 commando vs a level 10 Battleship at equal logistics and got that result. but if it was 2 level 5 commandos or even worse, 5 level 2 commandos, they would get obliterated. Also 2 level 10 commandos against a size 20 monolith should be a different outcome than battleship matchup. There is a huge logistical savings on higher level ground units that ships don't enjoy which I guess plays into the strategy. In HUGE fights with several level 10 ground units, the small number of large ships will get overwhelmed and you really have to use ground forces in addition. But in smaller engagements, where the levels are lower, level 5 raider units, you can actually go in there with half a dozen corvettes and be much more effective than bringing a battleship. Corvettes hit for half as much as capital chips but at like 5% of the cost. However because they are more firepower than hit points, you have to have the other side greatly out numbered to be very effective and survive

There is no easy way to outnumber huge ground forces with ships alone. Huge ground defenses have to be fought with huge ground forces.

Another thing about logistics vs cost. If you want to get "more logistics", you use the bigger more expensive units, they always pack a lot more punch for the same logistics. 10 logistics of commandos vs 10 logistics of fighters is no contest for example. And if you made a 500 logistics worth of commando artillery army, I can probably make a 200 logistics army of armored and bombers or something and obliterate you.

An all varitek force of 2000x aboard a fleet of 20 monoliths is probably going to obliterate anything you have on the ground but it costs 10 billion dollars

I don't see why it's difficult to make assertions, provided some caveats are understood. You provide the combat data, so I can run "simulations" in a spreadsheet to determine how many units are needed to beat another type of unit. But the caveats are, as I've said before, that this is idealized combat, meaning there are no random effects, no mixed compositions, and no intervention. Making determinations based on just a few of these data points would be a bad idea, but looking over the entire table, trends can be revealed, showing that some units have a wider range of dominance than others. By then considering logistical and financial costs, and how fast a combat would end, one can identify units that are generally better for their particular situation, and then consider a practical group composition over that smaller subset.

Like you say, 20x monolith+varitek combos will annihilate pretty much everything, but will also cost almost 20 mil per turn if you have no other military and a level 10 HQ. You might win several battles, but I'll get the last laugh and win the war when you go bankrupt and auto-liquidate.

Incidentally, it takes 5 level 10 commandos to bring down a level 10 max defense monolith, and possibly 9 level 10 commandos to bring down a level 10 max defense monolith with a level 10 varitek (this sim is even more iffy as I don't know how the damage reduction mechanic works exactly, so I ignored it).

But anyhow, are commandos working as intended, being specialists at taking out fixed defenses while also being great for taking down spacecraft?

I don't see why it's difficult to make assertions, provided some caveats are understood. You provide the combat data, so I can run "simulations" in a spreadsheet to determine how many units are needed to beat another type of unit. But the caveats are, as I've said before, that this is idealized combat, meaning there are no random effects, no mixed compositions, and no intervention. Making determinations based on just a few of these data points would be a bad idea, but looking over the entire table, trends can be revealed, showing that some units have a wider range of dominance than others. By then considering logistical and financial costs, and how fast a combat would end, one can identify units that are generally better for their particular situation, and then consider a practical group composition over that smaller subset.

Like you say, 20x monolith+varitek combos will annihilate pretty much everything, but will also cost almost 20 mil per turn if you have no other military and a level 10 HQ. You might win several battles, but I'll get the last laugh and win the war when you go bankrupt and auto-liquidate.

Incidentally, it takes 5 level 10 commandos to bring down a level 10 max defense monolith, and possibly 9 level 10 commandos to bring down a level 10 max defense monolith with a level 10 varitek (this sim is even more iffy as I don't know how the damage reduction mechanic works exactly, so I ignored it).

But anyhow, are commandos working as intended, being specialists at taking out fixed defenses while also being great for taking down spacecraft?

I see what you're saying. Commandos are supposed to be the defenses and structure take down unit, and really should not be that great at anything else, especially attacking star ships cheaper than anything else.

They already are doing almost 0 to ships but they are so cheap relative to the ships that you can mass so many it tips the scales. So I have another vector to try to fix the problem with. Instead of making then hit even less vs ships, perhaps I make Infantry hit them even harder and have them hit infantry even less. Or make some other unit like corvettes hit them harder. "How does that help capital ships?!" Well it can be looked at as a horribly unsupported situation where you have a lone capital ship because the other guy can go in with Commandos and destroy you NOT because they do a ton of damage but because capital ships are so shitty at hitting them back. What you should do is have Infantry in your ship hangars And/Or corvettes escorting because they hit commandos back so hard and commandos dont hit them back for squat. Its the basis for the "Size" mechanic in combat, get a larger mass of a counter unit to draw the fire away from the attacker that cant fight back well.

Commandos attacking a battleship in your example the battleship eventually loses BUT if you put a 20x of Infantry in the hangar of a battleship it swings the fight dramatically. the 20x infantry will now take like 70% of the fire (Size 10 bship, size 20 infantry) and if commandos hit infantry for squat Then the commando attack is going to fail . The 20x infantry is going to hit commandos for 50x20 = 1000 damage a turn, like 5x what the bship is hitting for.

I should run some numbers but I think the all commando vs battleship scenario where the bship loses is legitimate if you dont have ANY infantry to counter them on the ship (Or battlesuits/fighters for that matter). All capital ships have some hangar now, battleship has 20.

When we talk about ground unit vs mass infantry we should consider a touch of counter infantry and how much it tips the scales back.edited by DrDread on 6/21/2017